


The Month of Darkness

by night_sentinel



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Human Sacrifice, I haven't played doto yet, One Shot, Pre-Canon, Ritual Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 14:39:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14239446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/night_sentinel/pseuds/night_sentinel
Summary: "It's the place where my throat was cut, four thousand years ago.This is where my life ended and where it began again.It's where they made me."





	The Month of Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't played death of the outsider so I have no idea what is revealed about the outsider in that game, but this is just a short exploration of some of my personal thoughts and head canons :)

The rain pounds into the mud, washing it down into the sea where brine crashes against the cliffs. The sky has the bruise-green tinge of the storm, the oppressive dark front bearing down against the battered land.

Water drips down the rocks that sit in a circle atop the cliff, running in dark lines like the sky itself is bleeding. The people living in the village below the hill call the stones The Watchers, or Grandad’s Eyes, though what they are watching for, no one is certain.

The heavy drops wash together beneath the scrubby tussock grass and sedge, rolling between fallen stones that peak like half buried skulls from the underbrush. It swells and pours down the hill, spreading across the earth, slipping between the cobbles of a street, and seeping into the ragged shoes of the boy.

The boy shifts his feet and clenches his hand over the scarce few copper coins in his pocket, their square edges biting into his palms. The rain is soaking his hair, settling under his clothes. He huddles against the side of a building in the mud, glaring out at the world. The night grows dark, and there are no more stars in the sky behind the clouds.

Within a minute he is skulking around the back of the building where the drooping roof forms a slight overhang, skinny arms wrapped tight around himself against the chill. The boy is fifteen, he doubts he will see his sixteenth year. The blight has come, and there is no more room for orphans and beggars in the world. Soon enough, they say, there will be no more room for anyone. The crops grow poorly in the bitter ground. The sea is harsh, turning strong fishing boats to splinters. He’s heard from passing conversations that fish have been washing up on the shores to the south, great swathes of them rotting on the beaches.  
The blight has come. It has spread across the continent and soured the earth. Seeped into the ocean, building in dark, roiling brine and crashing against the cliff-faces. It has wafted into the sky, stealing the stars, snuffing out their lights like weak candle flames. It crawls up inside the back of men’s minds, dark and lonely. Words have even come across the sea from the remote isles, carried on the feet of birds that even there the blight rots at life.

It is the end. Of everything - according to the wise-women - and the boy knows that even if it isn’t, even if the world does survive another year, it will most likely be without him in it.

Thunder cracks through the air above him, and the boy huddles closer to the side of the building, the rain turning to a torrent.

Inside the building is a flickering candle flame, its waning yellow light sparking against the window the boy crouches under. The soft murmur of voices reaches out through the thin wooden walls as he eyes that point of moving light, half-words seeping out through the cracks.

“… forty bristlemouth, all dead in the net.”

“Its getting worse, last week… and only three survivors.”

“Down the coast they had a ship from the isles come in.”

“Yeah… news is better?”

“Plague of… and the whales…”

Then there is silence behind the walls, the boy focuses his attention on tying a small line of frayed string around his makeshift shoes. It probably won’t do much good, he’s feet will likely be wet for the rest of his life.

Its a long time before the voices pick up again, but the boy doesn’t pay much more attention, simply watches as the frail yellow candle light flickers and dies, dozing as best as he can beneath the window, cold fingers shoved deep into his pockets.

 

  
Morning rises cold and damp, the drizzle a chilling mist creeping through the air. The ever-present  storm clouds roll along the horizon out at sea, dark and menacing.

The boy has moved to sit in the street, chewing on a morsel of stolen fish, briny and stewed too long in vinegar. On the opposite side of street he watches a woman in rags stare listlessly up at the sky. He’s not the only beggar in this tiny village. A man down the street is yelling, the grey hairs of his beard wet and sticking to his gaunt features.

“No more fish, no more fire! The sea will rise up and take the land back with it! The whole of earth will fall beneath the waves! Only then will there be no more blight, there will be nothing!”

Most of the scant few people in the street pass by, avoiding eye contact with the man, but one or two stop for a moment, as if considering his words. The boy thinks about the crashing waves on the rocky shore beneath the village.

“What gods there were are gone, the last of their bones turned to dust! Their eyes have gone from the sky! The stars have fallen!” Skinny hands clutch at his hair, at his face.

“All gone! all gone… Gone! Gone! The sea… the sea will take it all… we will be void…” he moans into his hands, crouching down into the mud.

The boy’s dark eyes slide away, a mad man in these times is hardly unusual, the blight is insidious, rotting more than just the ground. Sometimes he thinks he feels it in his bones, cold and dark and empty. He rises, pulling rags tight around himself to ward off the mist as he wanders between the squat buildings of the village. His eyes are drawn often to the hill above the cliff, and the circle of stones that sit there. Grandad’s Eyes look like sightless holes silhouetted against the coming storm clouds.

The storm hits in the late afternoon. Rain once more lashing the ground and drumming heavily against thatch roofs. A cold wind shrieks across the coast, grasses waving and thrashing beneath it like waves breaking over the earth.

The boy sits inside the inn, for all that it is crowded, it is quiet. Most speaking in low voices or simply sitting in silence, tired eyes staring out the windows at the rain. The boy spoons the thin stew into his mouth, it had cost him his few coins, and even then he had not really had enough. There was no room for pity in these times, and so his serving was smaller than average. The old man who had been yelling on the street in the morning is huddled in the far corner under a threadbare coat, talking to one of the wise women.

The salt-scent of the ocean, whipped into the air by the storm, seeps into the wooden walls, the rickety tables and the stew itself, until even the air tastes like brine. Another ill omen, the boy thinks, though one hardly needed. Relentless storms, sky empty of stars, and the blighted land; the old man was right, the world was ending. 

The fire burning in the grate against the far wall is small, few things seem dry enough to burn under the weather. The yellow-orange flames flicker and glow over the coals, struggling against the brink of death.

The inn doesn’t close that night, and it is not just the boy who sleeps, curled tight against the walls in shelter from the storm outside. 

The sound of knocking wakes him from half slumber as the next day dawns, cold and wet, the storm calming but the rain still falling, tapping against the roof.

One of the fishermen enters, speaking in hushed tones to another.

“Down on the rocks, its at least 40 feet.”

It takes several moments of slow blinking before the boy realises they are talking about a whale, washed up on the beach after last night’s storm. The man, dressed in a fisherman’s oil-leather coat with its collar pulled high to keep out some of the rain, gestures down towards the sea. Others are taking interest, and the boy follows, curious despite himself, as several people leave the inn, hurrying down the narrow paths between the grey-brown tussock grass towards the beach. A few of the town’s fishermen join, long butcher-hooks over their shoulders. Whale meat is rare - there are few boats big enough to traverse the open seas where they can be hunted, but a whale washed up on the beach could be an unlikely opportunity, provided the meat is still good.

The boy pauses at the cliffs edge, wet tussock grass scratching at his feet and calves as he joins the smattering of people overlooking the rocky shore. 

There is a massive grey shape on the rocks below, and it takes a moment before the boy’s eyes make sense of what they are looking at. The whale is shaped long, like a fish, though its skin is unscaled, and wide, pointed teeth are visible in what was once the beast’s mouth. The creature looks long dead, flesh white and ragged where it is visible through torn skin. Massive bones have broken through its side, and half of its tail seems lost to the crashing waves, though its eye, big and dark is still visible within the head, staring sightlessly up towards the grey sky.

A few of the seamen and villagers have made their way along the narrow twisting path down the cliff face, dark blobs against the pale grass, while a few more are visible already on the beach, approaching the carcass. Crawling around it like flies.

The wind whips the boys dark hair around his face, damp strands sticking to cold cheeks and he shivers, but he doesn’t move away. The whale’s dark eye is an empty void, sucking his gaze in towards it.  
The edge of the cliff is rocky and damp as the boy sits down just back from its crumbling edge, ignoring the ever-present hunger gnawing at his belly. Before long the first people are returning back up the narrow path, expressions grim - the meat is mostly rotten, but several still return from the village with even longer butcher-hooks, their points sharp where they hang over the back of their shoulders.  
It is late afternoon by the time most have gone back to the village, words of ill omen on their tongues and grey disappointment in their eyes, but the boy stays watching from the top of the cliff as a few of the fisherman sink their hooks deep into the whale. Most of it lies untouched, rotting on the rocks, but the men work to salvage what they can.  
The sunlight is an unsettling green tinge behind the thick clouds by the time the last of the men below have given up, carrying thin strips of white flesh and blubber back up the cliff face, wrapped tightly in oil-skin cloths. One of them spares a glance towards the boy as he passes. He has something bright white-blue and glowing coating his fingertips and staining part of his sleeve, and when the boy looks down at the shape of the whale in the dimming light, he can see a thin line of the same trickling out into the sea, where it is lost to the churning waves.  
The man seems to notice him looking and pauses for a moment on the cliff top, turning to face him.

“Whale oil,” he says, staring out over the ocean. There is a dullness in his eyes.  
“Glow’s pretty, but you can’t cook with it. Useless unless you want lamps.”

There is a roll of thunder from ahead over the ocean, and the fine drizzle strengthens into a downpour.

The fisherman, his white whiskers clinging together in the wet, stares out into the clouds for a moment before turning back towards the village. The boy follows after a moment, sparing a last glance down at the carcass on the beach, slowly being swallowed by the long shadows of the evening.

 

  
A chill wind whistles down along the beachfront that night, pushing the squalling rain in front of it and collecting the salt spray as it flies into the air. The carcass of the whale is gone the next morning, when a few people go back to cliff in the bitter breeze, leaving nothing but rocks in its wake.

In the tavern, the old fishermen pull their coats around them and complain of the chill that should only be found out on the deep ocean. Time passes slowly and an air of foreboding settles heavily on the village. They are dying, the last of the food stores are running dry, and the boy is not alone in the streets. Gaunt faces and dull eyes stare listlessly at the empty sky, three fresh graves lie in the hill to the North. There are whispers in the darkness behind closed doors, around the weak light of a candle flame on a broken table. The boy skulks around the edges of it, hearing only words in passing. There is a desperate edge to them, if something is not done soon it will be too late, but what is to be done?

The rain continues, cold and relentless, it runs down the boy’s face and puddles under his feet as he sits hunched against the side of the old fish-gutting shed, empty and silent - no boats have been out on the sea for weeks. There are no longer any coins in his pockets, but he has so far managed to scrounge enough food too survive, even as his face and limbs grow thinner, and his body colder. He thinks he might be dying, slowly, day by day along with the blighted earth.

Now and then he finds the eyes of a few of the village elders on him, before they flicker away again. A few of them look almost guilty as they do.  
He wonders what they see, he is not the only orphan in this village, not the only beggar, not the only one slowly dying. There is an oppressive air of dullness over the village, dead eyes and blank stares, quiet voices and a sense of hopelessness as starvation and blight and coldness makes its way into them. It make the few who seem to cling to some kind of hope, some kind of life, more noticeable to the boy, as he watches dully from the gutter his face cold and blank.  
Some of the villagers have taken to looking up at the stones on the hill, and touching a hand near their eyes, looking furtive and even embarrassed as they do. The boy catches words under a windowsill, snippets of sentences falling between the raindrops.

“But what are they watching…”

“Nothing, that’s the point of all this.”

“You know… all sandstone around here… wonder where they came from.”

“We can make one… and all it takes…”

“It won’t work.”  
“Its all we have… and if I believe, _we believe…_ ”  
“You’ve been… the ritual?”

“Yes but-”

“…found the bronze… whale oil?”

“What we managed…”

“It’ll be enough”

“But… found the one?”

“…orphan… no one to miss him.”

“If this doesn’t work…”  
“…then nothing…”

“More important is… see his eyes?”

There was silence between the steady pour of rain.

“Light another candle… there is more to discuss.”

 

When the boy was much younger his mother had told him stories of the ocean, of the whales in the deep, bodies big enough to rock the earth when they moved. She had told him, blood in her breath and eyes glazed over, that the cliffs by their village had been made when a whale had flicked its tail and a huge wave had swallow half the hill.

There are faint tremors through the earth that night, and the boy wonders if they reach his mother’s bones, buried somewhere in the damp fields outside the village. Worried eyes peer out into the night, as the sky and earth rumble in tandem, but when morning comes the town and the cliffs are the same as they had been. There is no relief in the people’s tight faces. The rain continues.

 

  
The boy is skulking on the far side of the village, cold hands in his pockets and gaze set out at the stormy horizon. Movement across the empty street draws his attention, and he watch as a fisherman he only vaguely recognises approaches. The boy looks up with blank eyes as the man stops in front of him, beads of water on the tips of his hair and the collar of his coat. The man licks his lips nervously, eyes darting up to the stones on the hill before he strikes, fast and desperate. His punch his week, but his knuckles are bony, and the boy tastes blood in his mouth as he finds himself kneeling in the mud.

He grits his jaw, but has no time to strike back before he is being dragged up by his arm. Another man is there now, one the boy didn’t see approach, pushing him roughly until he passes through a doorway and into the dark interior of one of the nearby houses.

He blinks against the darkness, ducks out from under a loosening hand and kicks hard at the man’s ankle. There is a swear somewhere above him and he aims his fist towards it, cutting his knuckles on someones teeth before another punch hits him in the face and he is back on the ground, spitting blood onto the dirt floor of the hovel. He is hauled backwards, before he can get his bearings, and finds himself on his knees, hands behind him and a man’s iron grip. He struggles for a moment before giving up. Glaring ahead into the darkness.

There is a scuff in front of him, and then the yellow sulphur flare of a match. A candle is lit, illuminating several grim faces in the darkness.

One of the village wise women places the candle down on the table, and looks up in the direction Grandad’s Eyes might be in. She touches an old wizened finger to each of her eyelids before glancing out towards the doorway.

There is the silence of several people holding their breaths before one of the other men in the room speaks, his oil-leather coat creaking slightly as he moves.

“And this is what it comes too?” There are deep shadows beneath the mans eyes, and his hair is lank and grey.

“It will work,” the wise woman says, her eyes finally landing on the boy. “It has to. There is already _nothing_ inside him, I see the void in his eyes.”

“If it doesn’t…” Another voice from beyond the candle flame. The boy stares blankly at where he thinks its owner is, jaw tight.

“Then all is lost, we have no other course to take.”

Another man steps forward, thin and tired.

“We have all done the ritual, we have _made_ it a ritual.” He touches a finger to his eyelid, there is a faint blue-white glow on his dirt-encrusted fingertip.

The wise woman nods, “One who is not one of us, not bound to the earth like us. We can call it into being, we can place eyes and hands in the void that is left beyond the sky. The old gods may have died long ago, their bones may now be dust… the sky is empty, but it can be filled again.” Her voice holds conviction, even if her fingers clench uncertainly by her side.

There is a muttering in the room.

“If we believe, the belief becomes the thing. We only need a spirit, something to bind to the void. _It will work.”_ The woman says, then she looks at the boy for the first time, looks through him.

“It is time. _Time is running out_ ,” she waves back through another doorway. “Prepare him.”

The boy grimaces through bloody teeth as he is dragged into another, smaller room in the hovel. It looks like some kind of kitchen, dull light filtering through the warped glass in the tiny window, a table with a few blunted knives and some wizened herbs. His gaze however is drawn to the cracked wooden bowl holding a greasy lump of flesh in a pool of glowing liquid. Oil from the dead whale.

He can smell it, something briny with an almost tinny tang at the back of his throat.  
He struggles momentarily as rough rope is tied around his wrists and he is forced into a chair, but he is fifteen and malnourished, and they are grown men, even if they too are thin and hungry. He glares mutinously up at his captors instead, testing the rope behind his back as he is bound to the chair.

One of the men distractedly pulls his coat closer around himself before reaching for the whale oil. Both men look up out the window where the stones might be visible on a clear day.  
The man dips a thumb into the viscous liquid, before bringing it up to his eyelids, touching each and leaving behind a smear of glow, when he blinks the whale oil momentarily becomes two glowing eyes in the dimly lit room. He hands the little bowl to the other man, who repeats the action. The boy vaguely recognises him as one of the fisherman who had found the whale, what is now days ago.

His face is tight and his eyes are dead as he approaches the boy, quick motions smearing whale oil over the boy’s eyelids as well. The boy tries to bite him when he brings his hands back with more oil, and only gets the briny taste of it mixing with the blood already in his mouth for his trouble. He spits on the floor, headless of the glowing line of spittle and red running down his chin.

The fisherman frowns, but doesn’t react other than being quick with his hands to draw lines and circles over the boy’s rags. He finishes with two more smears over the back of the boy’s hands before stepping back.

“Its done?” He addresses his companion.

The other man brings a finger almost subconsciously up to his eyes and glances back out the window. “Eyes of the… other,’ he mutters as though testing the words out. “It should be enough.”

Both men stare at the boy for a moment longer before ducking back out the door, shoulders hunched and tight.

The boy is left alone, he pulls at the ropes, though he does not think of what he would even do if he managed to get free, where he would go. After a while of fruitless tugging he lets himself rest. Listens to the rain pattering against the windowpane as it grows heavier, the storm clouds outside growing darker, and feels the occasional tremor pass beneath his feet. He is not sure how long he waits there, in the dingy kitchen smelling of whale oil, but it is close to dark when he is collected again.

He glimpses pale, grim faces beneath the hoods of oilcloth coats the men and women have pulled over their heads to guard against the worsened rain. The boy has no such protection, and the rain mixes with the half dried oil on his face and clothes as he is pushed through the village. Mixed raindrops slide into his eyes between one blink and the next, and for a moment the world is a swirl of blue tinged glow. Wind swept grasses become waves, and the edge of clouds are swirling waters. He blinks again and the oil is wiped from his eyes, the world dark again. 

A few thin faces watch from windows and doorways as he is pulled roughly along the muddy track between the houses, but no one comes outside, and the streets of the small village are empty.

He counts nine men and women around him as he is dragged onto the thin winding path that leads up the hill towards the stones. He trips, landing heavily on his knees in the mud, and starts to shiver as the chill wind sweeps over him, wet and cold and with no shelter. He grits his teeth to stop them chattering, and blinks cold, salt-tasting rain out of his eyes.

Grandad’s eyes are large wet slabs of granite when the small group, hunched figures in the wind and rain, reach the top of the cliff. Hundreds of feet below is the crashing of the storm-driven waves, battering the rocky shoreline. Twisted blight-withered trees, their wood bleached white like bone, have grown up between the rocks, and their branches claw like fingers against the sky, lit up by the first flash of lightning that arcs across the clouds. Thunder rolls through soon after, and there are several nervous glances towards the sky.

The boy doesn’t fight as he is forced to lie back on one of the fallen stones, arms and legs pulled and tied down. He blinks rain out of his eyes, staring up into the swirling storm clouds. Faces and figures step back, the men and women who had taken him forming a loose circle between the standing stones.

The wise women steps forwards. She speaks, but the boy can only catch a few words through the driving rain.

“A spirit, bound to the void. Forced away from the mortal earth, to become the every-stranger, an outsider. We place him in the void, and we restore balance.”

She holds something up, and the next flash of lightning catches on the edge of the blade. “A ritual sacrifice to bind. We have made the rituals, _we will believe in him_.”

She turns to the boy, leans over him, and he can see the bright shining candle-flame of hope burning behind her eyes.

“I am sorry,” she whispers, and then, “you will save us all.”

The boy struggles and pulls at the ropes binding him as he feels the first press of the dagger against his throat. Then it is being drawn across, cutting deep, and his chest seizes, mouth opening with ragged gasps as he tries to breath through the wound. He coughs blood and gurgles, arms pulling uncontrollably against his bindings, the last of his body’s warmth seeping out across the stone as he drowns in his own blood. Between the cold salt-scented rain running over his body and the dark wetness filling his lungs, he thinks for a moment that he has been thrown from the cliff, his body sinking beneath the crashing waves below.

One last tremor runs through the earth, and the storm clouds seem to grow darker, heavier in the night. The boy grows still, rain mixing with blood on pale skin.  
There is total silence from those gathered around, then a faint muttering as the boys eyes, still open and blankly staring up at the sky, fill with an inky swirl of void-darkness, an unsettling sheen cast over them.

The wise woman clutches the bloodstained dagger to her chest, and looks up at the sky through the raindrops. Between the churning storm clouds there is the faint glimmer of stars.

“Outsider’s eyes,” she murmurs, and touches her finger to her eyelid reverently.

 

The One Who Is Bound Outside sinks through layers of darkness, cold and irreversibly alone. The boy is no more, his spirit has become a part of the void. The void itself seems to solidify around him, and empty black eyes look through the veil of nothingness. Cliffs and rocky outcrops form and spin off out of nothing. Glowing whale oil drifts through the space between, falling out of cracked wooden bowls.  
The Outsider floats in the void. Sees all that has been, and what might yet be. He sees cities and plagues and great fires, fallen continents and broken empires. His immutable gaze looks back along the silver thread of what had been his life, linking his being with the earth. There are stars visible once more in its sky, and the blight will soon be fading - the end of the world forestalled once more by a presence existing outside of mortal life.  
In a small fishing village perched high on the cliffs along an enormous continent, the body of a boy with glowing whale oil painted fresh over his corpse-pale skin is rowed out into the ocean, and dropped into its depths. Three days later the village is lost to the crashing waves, leaving nothing but new cliffs in its wake, the ocean washing against a virgin shore.  
From his place outside the warmth of life and death, the Outsider watches it all.

**Author's Note:**

> And lo! in the month of darkness  
> And lo! his name destroyed  
> And lo! he still whispers in silence  
> And lo! he went into the void


End file.
